News and Interviews 2015

Authors on Tour #488: C.J. Box Podcasts Badlands

C.J. Box is the author of more than a dozen novels including the award-winning Joe Pickett series. He’s the winner of the Anthony Award, Prix Calibre 38 (France), the Macavity Award, the Gumshoe Award, the Barry Award, an Edgar Award and is an L.A. Times Book Prize finalist. Box reads from and discusses his new novel Badlands, a masterpiece of suspense set in a time and place that readers won’t soon forget.

CRIMESPREE MAGAZINE-C.J. BOX: THE BADLANDS INTERVIEW

Badlands by C. J. Box is the follow up to last summer’s thriller, The Highway. It brings back the character Cassie Dewell who has moved from Montana to Grimland, North Dakota, a shale oil boomtown. Not only is she still tracking the serial killer, the Lizard King, but now must deal with biker gangs, drugs, and a murder witnessed by Kyle Westergaard, a twelve year old suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome. As Cassie struggles to find answers the plot’s suspense ratchets up.

WAMC Northeast Public Radio Review and Interview

05/12/2015

New York Times–bestselling writer C. J. Box returns to his Joe Picket series with Endangered, a thrilling new novel, featuring the Wyoming game warden.

Joe Pickett had good reason to dislike Dallas Cates, even if he was a rodeo champion, and now he has even more—Joe’s eighteen-year-old ward, April, has run off with him. And then comes even worse news: The body of a girl has been found in a ditch along the highway—alive, but just barely, the victim of blunt force trauma. It is April, and the doctors aren’t sure if she’ll recover. Cates denies having anything to do with it—says she ran away from him, too—and there’s evidence that points to another man. But Joe knows in his gut who’s responsible.

Joe Pickett wasn’t supposed to survive 14 years. C.J. Box created the Wyoming game warden as a one-off character for his first novel, 2001’s “Open Season.” Then his publisher asked for two more books starring Pickett. Readers connected with the character, so much so that Pickett has now been featured in 15 books, including Box’s latest, "Endangered,” which was published this month.

C.J. Box Talks About His Latest Joe Pickett Novel, Endangered

C.J. is a good friend of the program, and for a treat, Hugh spent time on the show talking about Endangered, and continued the conversation on the Aftershow, which is normally heard exclusively by subscribers of the Hughniverse. But C.J. to be shared with the public, certainly more than Hillary Clinton’s emails. You should definitely pick up the book, but here also is the audio and transcript of Hugh’s extended conversation with C.J. Box.

On Tuesday, March 10, Wyoming author C.J. Box released the fifteenth installment of his Joe Pickett series. In Endangered, Pickett is investigating the slaughter of a flock of sage grouse when he receives the call that his daughter has been beaten almost to death. Pickett sets out to find who did it and bring him to justice.

Box, a Wyoming native, is a New York Times bestseller and has sold over six million copies of his books in the U.S. alone.

'Endangered:' A Talk With C.J. Box

C. J. Box is the bestselling author of 16 Joe Pickett novels, four standalone novels, and a collection of short stories called Shots Fired. He's won multiple awards including the Edgar, the Anthony, the Gumshoe, and the Barry awards. He lives with his family outside Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Endangered begins with Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett learning his 18-year old adopted daughter, April, has disappeared. She's found in a ditch along a highway. April, the victim of blunt force trauma, is in a coma. It's uncertain if she will recover. Dallas Cates, the man April ran off with, denies any responsibility; and evidence begins pointing to another man. Joe cannot conceive of the danger he's about to encounter as he tries to unravel the mystery of what happened to April.

How and why did you begin writing fiction?I always had an interest in writing. All through high school and college, I was associated with the student newspapers. My first job was working for a small weekly newspaper in Wyoming. That's when I really started thinking about writing fiction. My first novel, which later became Open Season, was hatched while I was a newspaper reporter, covering a story about creatures in Wyoming called black-footed ferrets. They were thought to have been extinct, but were discovered at that time. That story played out in a fascinating way, and I used it as the subject matter for my first book.

CHEYENNE, WY - The fifteenth novel in best-selling New York Times author C.J. Box’s Joe Pickett series will be released on Tuesday March 10.

Endangered takes place shortly after the last novel (Stone Cold) ended. Joe’s daughter April has been left for dead, along with his friend Nate Romanowski; but are the two incidents related? When it comes to Joe Pickett, you can bet they are. Add to that, a slew of suspects who may or may not have done it, and the destruction of an entire sage grouse community it’s a case that’s pulling Joe away from his family when they need him most and forcing him to question the loyalties of those he works with.

Overall, Box returns with a fantastic new novel that’s hard to put down and continues to bring the reader along with him as Joe Pickett’s adventure/case unwinds.

Speaking of Mysteries Podcast Interview

03/09/2015

Episode 42: C.J. Box

The course of Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett’s life never did run smooth. With his daughter April in grave condition in a Billings, Montana hospital and his best friend Nate Romanowski missing, Joe has a full plate in C.J. Box’s latest, Endangered

C.J. Box’s novels have been lauded by readers and critics alike for their complex plots, true-to-life characters, and his stark lyrical depiction of the New West.

His latest novel—ENDANGERED—is no exception. Box’s soft-spoken but hard-hitting protagonist, Joe Pickett, is back—and this time, it’s personal. When a young woman found beaten to near death turns out to be Joe’s stepdaughter, Joe’s gut tells him that the perpetrator isn’t the man in custody, but her boyfriend, rodeo champion Dallas Cates. Proving it means facing off with the whole Cates clan, who will do anything to protect Dallas.

What does it take to write books that grab readers both by the hearts and throats? The Big Thrill recently interviewed Box to find out.

Joe Pickett’s relationship with his family—his wife, his daughters—is somewhat complex. How does this help you, the writer and creator, grow and mature the characters, and the series as a whole?

The novels take place in real time. In the first, Open Season, Joe’s oldest daughter Sheridan is seven years old and she’s a major character in the book. In ENDANGERED, she’s a sophomore in college. Over the span of the novels, his three daughters have grown up and are still growing and changing. Joe and his wife Marybeth mature and change as well. I think (hope) this keeps the series fresh both for me and for readers. Things that happen in one book impact the characters in the next. I try to keep it so the reader doesn’t have to completely suspend disbelief from book to book.

For someone known for writing and publishing an average of two books a year, the prospect of hammering out a short story might seem the literary equivalent of a walk in the park.

C.J. Box would heartily disagree with that sentiment.

"If anything, short stories are the hardest things in the world," he said. "In a novel, you can meander a bit, fill in the back story a little more. But in a short story, there's no room for error. You've got to launch in, establish your characters, the location, the motives for what's to come, and everything has to be there for a reason."